Jean Morély (ca 1524-ca 1594) et l'utopie d'une démocratie dans l'église, N o CCLXXVIII in theseries Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance by Philippe Denis; Jean RottReview by: Robert M. KingdonBibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, T. 56, No. 3 (1994), pp. 854-856Published by: Librairie DrozStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20679715 .

Accessed: 24/06/2014 21:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Librairie Droz is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bibliothèqued'Humanisme et Renaissance.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.12 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:14:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

854 comptes rendus

Philippe Denis and Jean Rott, Jean Mor?ly (ca 1524-ca 1594) et l'utopie d'une d?mocratie dans l'?glise, Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1993, in-4?, 404

p. (including 13 of illustrations). N? CCLXXVIII in the series Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance.

More than thirty years ago, I was fascinated to discover in Geneva ample documentation of a sharp debate within the French Reformed Church over the proper organizational shape this newly created church should take. It

anticipated in many intriguing ways debates over church government in later times and other places, particularly in seventeenth-century Britain and Ame rica. On one side were the clerical leaders of the French Reformed, John Cal

vin, his successor Theodore Beza, and others. The position they defended with considerable vehemence and, in the end, complete success, is one which came to be labeled ?presbyterian? in English. On the other side was an obs cure French nobleman named Jean Mor?ly. The position which he defended and for which he won considerable support, but only for a single decade, is one which came to be labeled ? congregational ? in English. The most impor tant statement of that point of view is a book Mor?ly published in 1562 under the title, 'TYaict? de la discipline et police chrestienne. I developed an extended narrative of this French debate, based on the Genevan material, for a book I published under the title Geneva and the Consolidation of the French Protestant Movement, 1564-1572: a contribution to the history of Congregationalism, Presbyterianism, and Calvinist Resistance Theory (Madi son: University of Wisconsin Press, and Geneva: Droz, 1967).

One of the first scholars to read this book was Jean Rott. He immediately brought to my attention some important supplementary information on

Mor?ly that had never come to my attention, specifically the manuscript draft of a substantial part of a second book Mor?ly had written in England defending his ? congregational ? point of view, titled De Ecclesiae ordine atque disciplina. It was obvious to both of us that someone really ought to write another book, this one about Mor?ly alone. Fortunately Rott himself decided to take on this assignment. He wrote a number of preparatory articles. And to assist him in bringing the project to completion he selected Philippe Denis.

It is hard to imagine two scholars better qualified to prepare a book on this topic. Rott has long been known to the scholarly community as one of the really great technicians working on the history of sixteenth-century Europe, a superb paleographer and a man with a detective's nose for locating fresh information in unexpected places and interpretating it with authority. Denis is gaining increasing respect as an analyst of the thought of this

period, using his training as a Dominican to develop acute analyses of ideas developed within the theological community of the sixteenth century, parti cularly about ecclesiology.

The book is made up of three parts. The first is a biography of Mor?ly, largely prepared by Rott. The second is an analysis of Mor?ly's thought, pre pared by Denis. -The third is a s?t of annexes containing documents and other information in support of the earliers parts, most of it collected by Rott and checked by Denis.

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.12 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:14:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

COMPTES RENDUS 855

The biography that makes up the first part presents an astonishingly detailed account of the career of a man barely known before even to specia lists. Mor?ly was born of a French noble family with properties in and around Paris. Rott supplies information about his parents, his siblings, his wife, his children, and these properties. They add up to a portrait of a man in comfortable circumstances who was hurt in material ways but not ruined

by his decision to turn Protestant. Rott then explores Mor?ly's intellectual

formation, demonstrating that he visited the fountainheads of the Protes tant Reformation, in Wittenberg and Zurich, and prepared a translation into Latin of Machiavelli's Art of War. He supplies a fresh account of the great ecclesiological quarrel in which Mor?ly was engaged, both in Geneva and France, between 1562 and 1572. And then he supplies a fresh version of his own absolutely new account of the man's later life. After the massacres of St. Bartholomew's day in France, Mor?ly took refuge in England, a country which he had already visited at an earlier period. For the rest of his life he

kept moving back and forth between England and his home estates in France. He drafted three additional books in England. The first was the

unpublished De Ecclesiae ordine. The second, a book on the apocalypse, one of a number stimulated by England's victory over the Spanish Armada, was

published in several editions both in England and in Germany. The third was a small book written for Henri HI of France before his assassination but

published afterwards and dedicated to his successor, Henri IV, containing advice on how to establish religious peace.

The analysis that makes up the second part of the book is devoted to

Mor?ly's ecclesiology as it was first developed in his Traict? de la discipline, then elaborated in his De Ecclesiae ordine. It demonstrates that Mor?ly belie ved that the Bible had dictated a single form of government appropriate for the church, and that it was up to leaders of both church and state to move toward this form. He would concede that while some principles controlling this government, which he labeled ? precepts ?, were immutable, others, which he labeled ?traditions?, did permit variation. The form of govern ment Mor?ly felt had been dictated for the church has often been called ?d?mocratie?, then and since, and Denis explores at some length what this means. He concludes that the kind of democracy Mor?ly favored was much like the kind of secular government he perceived as being used in Athens and certain other Greek city-states during their golden age. This meant in prac tice that the primary unit of church government should be the local congre gation and that each congregation must be ruled by an assembly of all its confirmed members in good standing, excluding women (on Biblical

grounds). This assembly had four primary functions: (1) to establish and maintain true doctrine through public exercises of Biblical study, often cal led ?prophesyings?, sometimes called ?congr?gations?; (2) to control the

morals of the members of its community, if necessary through the use of excommunication; (3) to elect and, if necessary, depose ministers, including not only pastors but also deacons and elders; (4) to maintain good fraternal relations with other congregations. He would accept a considerable role in church leadership for pastors and elders, even bishops and secular princes, but always subject to final decisions by local congregations. He would not

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.12 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:14:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

856 comptes rendus

expect a congregation to make its decisions by simple majority vote, but rather by a consensus shaped by its ?better? and more experienced members. He would insist that these essential functions cannot be fully delegated to

any kind of representative, whether an individual or a group. This adds up to a classic form of Congregationalism, surprisingly close

to the forms advocated and adopted by many English Puritans during the seventeenth century, particularly in the early colonies of New England. Denis finds no evidence that English Congregationalists met or read Mor?ly. Indeed they barely knew of his existence, and then only through remarks by his enemies. The historical importance of Mor?ly's doctrine, therefore, lies in what it anticipated and paralleled, not in what it directly influenced.

The annexes that make up the third part of this book include a variety of materials. Among them are carefully edited texts of letters by and about

Mor?ly that provide important information on his carreen There is material on Mor?ly's relatives and properties, both in France and Geneva. There are

bibliographical descriptions of all of Mor?ly's works and analyses of the three books he published in England, with a particularly long one on the

unpublished De Ecclesiae ordine. There is even a copy of a draft on church

discipline adopted by the important French national synod held in La Rochelle in 1571, but not included in the published versions of its acts.

At the end of the book are no less than four indexes: of places, people, themes, and Biblical citations. And there is a set of thirteen illustrations, photographs of relevant title pages and sample manuscripts.

Altogether this is an amazingly fresh and authoritative contribution to a topic of importance in the ecclesiastical history of early modern Europe. It deserves the attention of anyone seriously interested in ecclesiology, whe ther of this or any period.

Madison, Wisconsin, USA. Robert M. Kingdon.

Irena Backus. La Patr?stique et les guerres de religion en France. Etude de l'activit? de Jacques de Billy (15354581) O.S.B, d'apr?s le MS. Sens 167 et les sources imprim?es. Institut d'Etudes Augustiniennes, Paris, 1993.

Sous la pouss?e de la R?forme, le XVIe si?cle a vu l'essor de la th?ologie positive et, parmi ses disciples, de la patristique et de la patrologie. Du c?t? de l'Eglise romaine, c'est ? comme l'a montr? P. Polman dans son ?tude sur L'?l?ment historique dans la controverse religieuse du XVIe si?cle (1932)

?

pour s'opposer ? la th?se protestante de l'autorit? exclusive de la Bible que les controversistes ont affirm? l'insuffisance de l'Ecriture tant formelle (elle est souvent obscure) que mat?rielle (elle ne contient pas toute la R?v?lation), et pos? la n?cessit? de recourir ? l'autorit? de l'Eglise, interpr?te authentique du dogme et gardienne des traditions non ?crites. Or l'Eglise s'exprime parti culi?rement par la bouche des P?res, dont le consentement t?moigne en faveur de la v?rit? qu'elle ?nonce officiellement dans les d?finitions des Conciles et des Papes. Contre le principe du sola scriptum, mais aussi contre la doctrine de la declinatio doctrinae d?velopp?e par les Centuriateurs de

This content downloaded from 195.78.109.12 on Tue, 24 Jun 2014 21:14:07 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions